Joseph A. Richardson

Joseph A. Richardson, my great great great grandfather, was born in Antigua, in the West Indies. His father George was a merchant, and his mother Eliza Jane, came from a family with plantation interests in the West Indies. Joseph was the fourth of seven children, only the youngest of whom was born on U.S. soil, the others born in either the West Indies, or Scotland. When Joseph's father George immigrated in 1823, 5 year-old Joseph was left behind in Scotland with his expectant mother. Eliza Jane and the rest of the children arrived in Baltimore sometime in 1824, and joined George and the older children in Ohio.

I have found no subsequent written record of Joseph until his marriage to Sarah J. Williams in 1842. By this time George had moved most of his family to Wheeling, further north on the Ohio river on the Virginia side. Joseph and Sarah were married in Washington County, Pennsylvania, not far from Wheeling, but at the time a place offering a marriage license with less bureaucratic strings attached than Ohio County, Virginia. I have no information about Sarah J. Williams, except that she was from Belmont County, Ohio at the time of her marriage.

Joseph and Sarah J. Williams had 6 children. Theopolis, born 1843, George William, 1846, Sarah C., 1848, Alice S., 1850, Joseph, 1852 and Ida, 1856. On March 31, 1852 Joseph bought a lot in Peninsula cemetery in Wheeling. That was the day his son George William, aged 6 died. Sarah C. died 2 weeks later, Alice S. followed April 29, and by May 4 his son Joseph was also dead. Whatever spring sickness struck Wheeling that year carried off all four children, leaving the eldest son, Theopolis, an only child. I never found the Richardson graves in Peninsula cemetery in 2005. Either the graves were never marked with stone, or the stones ar long gone. Sarah and Joseph had one more child, Ida Belle, born in 1858. Unfortunately, tragedy again struck the Richardson household, for Joseph's wife Sarah died of diptheria, at the age of 35, in October of 1859.

For the latter part of the 1840's and all of the 1850's the Richardsons were residents of Wheeling. In 1848 the couple are involved in land transactions back in Meigs County, Ohio. Joseph's older brother Nicholas had married into the Lauck family, and remained to farm in Meigs County for a decade after his father and siblings moved to Wheeling. For some reason, In Meigs County, in 1848, there was quite a flurry of land redistribution within the Richardson and Lauck family, probably due to the death of someone in Joseph's sister-in-laws family. For the next several years Joseph appears in the Ohio County land deed books, both buying and selling real estate in Wheeling. The Wheeling City Directories of the time listed Joseph's profession as a steamboat captain. The 1860 census listed the same occupation, and found Joseph, Theopolis, and Ida living in Wheeling.

In June, 1860 Joseph married Sarah C. Richards, a young lady 20 years younger. Sarah was from an old and well-respected Wheeling family, a family very

involved in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and a family Joseph had known for a number of years. Joseph was 42 years old when the Civil War broke out. Joseph did not join the army, but his son Theopolis was in the First West Virginia Infantry, and for the duration of the war was either fighting, or in Confederate prison. Joseph's brother-in-laws James Melvin Richards, and George Connelly, and numerous nephews all fought in the Union army. The Wheeling City directories list Joseph as a Captain, living in the household with his mother-in-law Mary Richards. His first son Joseph Melvin was born in Wheeling in 1863 and the subsequent children followed very quickly; George Leonard Clarence, 1865, Abigail Sophia, 1867, Alma Lorna, 1870, Clyde Alva, 1874 and James Alonzo in 1878.

In the spring of 1865, Theopolis, after surviving war, confederate prison, and the explosion of the Sultana, arrived back in Wheeling and was boarding with his father. In November Joseph bought 4 lots in Sardis, Monroe County, Ohio. Sardis was a very small, but thriving little town on the Ohio river, south of Wheeling. By December Joseph had moved his young family to Sardis. The same month Theopolis married Mary Ellen Wiley in Wheeling, and joined his father, cousin Reuben and cousin Henry in Sardis. By 1870, according to the census, and a few newspaper tidbits from the era, Joseph was a retired captain and a merchant in Sardis. He owned a store on the waterfront, and his son Theopolis was in his employ.

Joseph and Sarah lost their 2 year old daughter Alma to measles in the fall of 1872. Unfortuntately, Joseph's eldest son Theopolis died prematurely the following year of Civil War related health issues. Theopolis left a widow with 5 children, the youngest only 3 months old. Joseph sold lot 9 to the widow, Mary Ellen very soon after. In 1877 Joseph's daughter Ida Belle (from his first wife Sarah) married Samuel M. Suter. This couple settled in Sardis and Joseph's first grandchild from this marriage, Samuel Leroy, was born in 1878. Ida and Samuel had 4 more children, born after the death of Joseph. Little else is known about the Joseph and Sarah's life during the next few years. In 1879 the county newspaper reported that the safe in the Richardson store in Sardis was blown open and robbed. Joseph's nephew Reuben Richardson married and moved to New Martinsville and became a pharmacist. His nephew Henry Richardson, a blacksmith and ne'er-do-well, left Sardis during these years.

Joseph died in 1880. He was buried in Sardis cemetery next to his son Theopolis. Joseph left a widow with five children between the ages of 17 and 2. Sarah was executatrix of Joseph's estate. Joseph did not leave a will on file in the courthouse, so Sarah submitted one in probate court. The court then ordered a complete inventory of Joseph's estate, against which Sarah had to pay off the debts. In 1885 Sarah produced the final accounting, debts paid, to the court. During the next several years Sarah sold off the remaining lots and by 1890 had moved her family to Wheeling. Sarah C. Richardson died in 1928, nearly 50 years after Joseph. All the lots the Richardson's owned along the water front over the years were lost to a disastrous series of twentieth century floods. Today, what was once a busy water front business district on the Ohio river, is now grassland.

Joseph and his wife were very active in the Sardis Methodist Episcopal church. From 1871 (earliest records available) Joseph held the positions of steward and trustee. In the present-day Methodist Episcopal Church, built long after Joseph's death, there is a section of stainglass window dedicated to Joseph and Sarah Richardson. I attribute this inclusion of the stained glass window in the church to their son George L. C. Richardson, who became a Methodist Minister. According to a local paper in 1931, the Rev. George L.C. Richardson, of Pittsburgh, was an invited speaker for the 1931 Sardis homecoming. The Reverent was also an avid and enthusiastic family historian. It is his descendents who have been kind enough to share the Reverend's work with me. The Reverend Richardson legacy has given flesh to an otherwise skeleton bare Richardson family history.